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Morphic Resonance, brief tutorial and possible proof

See link for brief tutorial on Morphic Resonace.

http://www.entelechyjournal.com/rupertsheldrake.html

There have been a number of attempts to approve/disprove the theory, including a cash prize that was awarded for a test that proved the theory. The following paragraphs describe a simpler test involving crossword puzzles (quotes are Sheldrake's).

"The hypothesis (of Morphic Resonance) also applies to human beings. It should be getting easier for children to solve or play video games of a particular kind just because so many have learned them . . . or for people to learn new sports, new skills like windsurfing. In the human realm I am suggesting that what we learn is facilitated by morphic resonance from all those who have learned it before.

This is the area where the theory has been tested most extensively. Some of the first experiments were done in response to an international competition organized by the Tarrytown group in New York, sponsored by Bob Schwartz. The Tarrytown group offered prizes—twenty-thousand dollars in prizes—for the best tests of the morphic resonance theory, which could either support or go against it. The results were very interesting. There were some very good experiments done in human psychology; these are summarized in my book, The Presence of the Past.

This effort was preceded by a competition in the British magazine, Scientist, which offered a more modest prize for suggestions of inexpensive ways of testing the theory. Space does not allow summarizing all the work that is happening at present. I will just mention one experiment done recently. It is not, in fact, the best experiment, but it is the easiest to explain. This was done with crossword puzzles in the psychology department at Nottingham University. The young woman who did it, Monica England, reasoned as follows: If morphic resonance is happening, it should be easier to do today's newspaper crossword puzzle tomorrow than it would have been yesterday.

So we managed to persuade a London newspaper, The Evening Standard, to supply its crossword puzzle in advance for the purpose of this experiment. Students were tested in Nottingham the day before and the day after the crossword was published in London. They were also tested with a control crossword which was not published during that period. This of course involved testing different groups of students before and after. The control crossword gave a measure of each individual's ability to do crossword puzzles of that kind.

It turned out that students' performances on the test crossword did indeed improve by about 25 percent after it had been published, compared with the control crossword. This result is statistically significant and is, of course, very interesting."

Note: BTW this implies that someone who does the daily crossword later in the day rather than earlier in the morning will perform better/faster since a very large number of others will have already attempted/completed the crossword. Impress your friends! :-)






Edits: 05/26/07 05/26/07 05/26/07

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Topic - Morphic Resonance, brief tutorial and possible proof - geoffkait 05:57:24 05/26/07 (57)

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